Commentary

 

Peace.

Still Out of Fashion.

Still Right.

 

 

What’s winning got to do with it?

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Bernie is running for President, not as a Socialist or Independent, but as a Democrat.“Why bother?,” you ask. “He’ll be lucky to score as much as 25% against Hillary in the primary.”

Some will criticize his decision to run as a Democrat, the party of the millionaires, nowadays referred to by the political leadership as the “middle class.” But, of course, the party of the millionaires has it hands down compared to the party of the billionaires, if for no other reason, then because they mostly still need to work for a living, while the billionaires purchase elections and governments and set themselves up as models of philanthropy in Africa.

Utah Phillips

The late great folk historian/storyteller/songwriter Utah Phillips used to quote Eugene Debs and say, “Better to vote for someone you like and lose, than vote for someone you don’t like and win.” He also would say, this time paraphrasing Emma Goldman, “If you could change anything by voting, it would be illegal,” seemingly not mindful of the apparent contradiction between these two aphorisms.

But there is no contradiction unless you are thinking only of the literal outcome of the election. Voting can also be a powerful statement of public opinion, and a campaign can be a means of articulating ideas that will otherwise not see the light of day in a mainstream press that is far from free.

Who else out there will pay more than lip-service in a national campaign to the cancer of income inequality that goes hand-in-hand with the disassembling of democratic institutions? Who will effectively speak up against trade pacts designed to hand over what remains of the power of governments to multi-national corporations? Who else in the game will call unrelentingly for breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks? These things are hard to do when you’re funded by Goldman-Sachs.

Who else will use the election cycle to speak up for “Medicare for All,” and be heard? Against the NSA and the erosion of our Constitutional rights? Against endless war and for the conversion of our economy to a peacetime economy? I don’t see anyone else about to do it.

I have been voting since the year I turned 20, when I won the right to vote and flipped the lever for George McGovern. I have never since failed to vote in any election, but only once – in 2008 – have I voted for a winning candidate for President. The winner immediately proceeded to break my heart, allying himself with Wall Street, the NSA, and military madness.

Next year, I’ll be voting for another loser. My hope is that, in losing the election, we win the public discourse that has long been sorely lacking.

 

Dear Mr. President…

Just like every other registered Democrat in the country, I receive innumerable fundraising mailings asking me to help our heroes stop the Republican money machine determined to destroy our American values. Generally, I send the mailing back with no money, explaining why, knowing full well that no one will read it. But no one reads this blog either, so what the hell?

Anyway, this weekend I received yet another pitch, this one directly from the President himself – now how about that?!! – telling me what change looks like. Which is something like ex-Prez W writing to tell me what smart looks like.

Anyway, on the form I’m supposed to send back with my money, addressed “Dear Mr. President,” here’s what I wrote:

“You can NOT count on my support until you:

1. Kick Goldman-Sachs out of your Cabinet.
2. Get us out of all your wars – yes, they’re your wars now!
3. Free Bradley Manning and all your political prisoners.
4. Stop catering to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.
5. Stop supporting repression in Honduras, Columbia, Saudi Arabia, the Occupied Territories, and elsewhere.”

 

That Deficit Thingy

Now that there is a consensus (in Washington and among the MSM, anyway) that, as the President said in his State of the Union message, “the worst of the recession is over,” and that the worst problem facing this nation is the deficit (never mind the 20 million of us who are unemployed and the tens of millions of households whose mortgages are under water), let’s remember where the money is really being spent. Hint: it’s not on “earmarks” or energy assistance programs for poor people.

We will never successfully address this country’s economic inequities, the fraying of our democracy, the loss of of our civil liberties, or the breakdown in our economy’s ability to provide basic services until we address the realities of American militarism: what it costs, how we pay, who it benefits, and why.

The official military budget for 2012 is roughly $700 billion, including only the Department of Defense “base” budget and the additional funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, enough to dwarf any other portion of the non-trust fund budget. But according to a recent breakdown by military analyst Christopher Hellman, the honest total is almost twice that. That’s right, $1.2 TRILLION dollars!

The War Resisters League also prepares an annual analysis of military spending, which differs in some respects (missing some of the spending caught by Hellman, but attributing more of the interest on national debt to borrowing for the military), arrives at $1.4 trillion for 2011.

Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes

 

On Losing Hope

In my 38 years of voting, including 10 presidential elections, 2008 was the first time that the candidate I voted for won. I was cautiously elated, if that isn’t too contradictory. At last, for the first time since at least JFK, we had a president with the all three of what I consider the key leadership characteristics: intelligence, charisma, and vision, and he seemed to have a moral compass as well. I was concerned that Obama would not be as progressive as his rhetoric, but believed he was honest and competent, and that following through with even a substantial portion of his promises, supported by strong majorities in both houses of Congress, would make a real difference for lower income people here and abroad.

To say I am disappointed would be a gross understatement. Intelligence he has, yes, in spades. But so did Carter, Clinton, and even Bush Sr. Charisma, vision, moral compass – if they were anything more than election time smoke and mirrors, they certainly have not been on display.

I listened to the President’s peevish rant in December about compromise in regards to tax cut extensions for billionaires, and I don’t buy it. I would like to give him the benefit of doubt or chalk it up to a strategic mistake, but, given his record over the past two years, it looks entirely Clintonian to me.

So let’s look at “all we’ve accomplished” over the past two years.

First, the clear progressive accomplishments. I’m afraid this list is short and a bit shallow, especially in light of the promise of fundamental change that the country voted on, but I welcome comments to lengthen it:

• The appointment of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor
• Passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act
• The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court
• The appointment of Elizabeth Warren as Special Advisor to the (pro-Wall Street) Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (not, unfortunately, as Director of an independent CFPB).
• A more fair NLRB
• A somewhat more effective FDA
• The decision to stop enforcing the DoMA (which I previously criticized the President for not reversing)

Like the President did in his tax cut address, his defenders blame Republican obstructionism or talk about the need to be pragmatic, notwithstanding the lack of Democratic cohesiveness in Congress and Obama’s inability to exert pressure to get more of what was promised. Yet, for the sake of argument, I will not blame President Obama for all of our “unachievable” or compromised goals or for the failures of Democratic Congressional leaders, so I will excuse (for now):

• A stimulus that was inadequate to revive consumer demand and employment
• The failure to take over the financial institutions we taxpayers bought
• Weak fiscal reform that does not adequately regulate speculative investments, restore Glass-Steagall restrictions, or control the size of banking and financial institutions
• The weakening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Elizabeth Warren’s role
• Insurance company driven health care reform, most of the provisions of which do not take effect for years, rather than Medicare for All
• Continuation of the Iraq War as a privatized enterprise
• Expansion of the Afghanistan War
• The failure to pass “card check”

I will also excuse mistakes made in the moment, since some of those are inevitable. But here is a list of bad policy decisions that were made with forethought and that were within the President’s purview and power:

• Obama’s key economic advisors and appointees – William Daley, Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin – have all been neoliberal architects of free trade, financial deregulation, and the speculative bust.  A veritable “who’s who” of Wall Street, they include not one liberal.
• The Presidential Deficit Commission, which Obama created and stacked with deficit hawks, has charted a path towards the further erosion of social security and public services, while leaving the military essentially untouched.
• Obama’s State Department failed to cut off aid or otherwise act decisively against the coup regime in Honduras.
• Obama has continued George W’s torture and rendition policies. 
• Obama has not closed Guantanamo, where we are still holding people without charges or trials or, in some cases, even reason.  He stopped torture there, but expanded it by creating a “legal black hole” at Bagram. 
• Obama has continued and expanded domestic surveillance, and his FBI has conducted raids on peace activists’ homes in Minneapolis, Chicago and North Carolina.
• The “transparency” we were promised has not happened, and Obama’s State Department is coordinating a harassment campaign against WikLeaks in retaliation for the legal release of embarrassing information. 
• Obama imposed an anti-labor federal pay freeze that has no meaningful effect on the federal deficit.

The impact of all this goes far beyond the bad policies and their results, beyond the lost rare opportunities. The most serious consequence is the continued loss of what is elsewhere called “political space.” The political middle, and the entire political spectrum, continues its 30-year shift to the right, limiting more and more what is possible.

The biggest crisis now – even greater than the loss of freedom and human rights, the loss of jobs and economic opportunity, the loss of fair elections, the unnecessary loss of lives, the loss of our global environment – is the loss of the possibility of fixing these things.

Unless I am very surprised by what happens over the coming two years, the next time around I’m voting for a third party candidate for president. And it’s not because I’m stubborn and unrealistic.